If you want to tinker, you accomplish nothing. Lamar Smith wants to tinker with big government spending. He wants to tinker with the EPA. Lamar Smith has been in office as a U.S. Congressman for 27 years. While he’s been in office, the debt has exploded from 2.2 trillion dollars to over 17 trillion dollars. The Constitution says that the House of Representatives spends the money. It is well and good to lay the blame on our Presidents, but it is the House that writes the checks. Lamar Smith has been a party to this debt explosion. While Mr. Smith consistently and persistently tells us we cannot continue to spend money we don’t have, he continues to vote to spend that very same money.
Mr. Smith voted to gut the Glass-Steagall Act and legalize financial gambling by big banks. Subsequently, he found it necessary to bail out those banks even when 86% of the calls to his office from his constituents asked him not to.
With Debbie Wassermann Shultz and Rahm Emanuel, Lamar Smith co-sponsored HR2640 known as the Veterans Disarmament Act. Among other things, it criminalizes gun ownership by anyone who has ever been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. It strips a class of citizens of their constitutional right without due process. Smith is the only republican south of Connecticut to co-sponsor the bill.
Lamar Smith’s signature legislation was SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would in effect have given the government free rein to censor any website it wanted to without due process.
More than any of this, Lamar Smith is not a fighter. He is not assertive. We live in a time of financial desperation where half measures will not save us. Congressmen are busy. It takes energy and discipline to be effective and remain connected to the people. After 27 years, anyone should be burned out. We need energetic, fresh conservatives to fight our way back to prosperity through freedom. The Republican party must get back to being the party of freedom, opportunity, and growth in deed as well as in name.